EP 235 – Breaking Through Obstacles: The Mindset And The Process with Michelle Young

As a business owner, knowing when the need to make that turning point to make the company go from sprout to tree is important. You often think that you are ready to make that change, find coaches and do the steps to scale, but there are still those times when you bump on walls and ask if you are doing the right thing. Michelle Young helps in breaking through obstacles like these. She will guide you to evaluate yourself in the areas of health, relationships, career and creative expression. These four different areas of your life need to have balance in order to keep moving forward. Michelle explains the need to have an outline of the things you want so you don’t build a skyscraper without a foundation.

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Breaking Through Obstacles: The Mindset And The Process with Michelle Young

I am excited to have a good friend on here, somebody that we consider part of our extended family, my really great friend who’s joining us from the West Coast, Michelle Young. How are you doing today?

I am fantastic. I’m feeling good.

For those that don’t know who you are, Michelle, why don’t you tell them a little bit about who Michelle at Play is?

My name is Michelle Pierson Young. I live here in the Pacific Northwest with my husband of nearly 31 years, and goats. I’m a life coach. I get to live my dream every single day by teaching. I get to teach people the principles that create a greater capacity for happiness. That’s the best way I have to describe it. We have four children together. I have this really bizarre resume from running a multi-million dollar company to doing fundraisers.

I can actually remember walking with Aaron. Aaron was in town here for an event about four years ago. We were walking down South Congress after dinner and he was talking about how you would ask him, “I think I’m going to go this route. I’ve got so much to share to help people overcome some things.” I can remember he was so jacked up about it and things were rocking and rolling. It all started with your blog for the most part and it evolved from that. You deal with so many different types of people. I’ve seen you at the Aaron Young events. Is there a unifying thread throughout the people that you work with that are struggling with things or is there a variety of different things? What do you think is the biggest a-ha that you see with people struggling these days?

The biggest a-ha with people struggling is that they know there’s something more. They’re going in there doing their thing, and usually my clients are ready to make real change. They’re like, “I decided I was going to change and switch it up.” You see it all the time with notes. People coming in and they’re like, “I’ve got a good life but I’m ready for something more.” They come in and they do something like note closing and they want to learn from the best. What happens, the unifying theme is that they’re doing the stuff, they’re doing the right things, and they still seem to be bumping up against a wall. They’re like, “I’m doing it. What exactly is going on?” At the risk of sounding cliché, because it really does and I hate to sound like everybody else there, but it’s really your mindset. There’s a script going on that you picked up along the way, usually we’re a bunch of six-year-olds running the world. It’s terrifying. We all look at Trump and we’re like, “He’s a six-year-old running the world,” but you are, too. What happens is people get these ideas in their head and they don’t even know how wonky they are. They keep going and bumping up against the wall. They’re bumping up against their belief system, what they really believe is possible. The unifying theme is that people are like, “I’m ready to be done with this. Whatever it takes is what I’m ready to do.” That puts them in a position so that they get teachable. You see that exact same thing happen within what you do.

We see a lot of people hit these walls, the underlying script, the belief systems of what they can or cannot do. Henry Ford said it best, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re correct.”

People go, “I think I can,” but they don’t.

I heard our buddy Greg say that we’re sometimes saying, “We believe the lies of the bullshit that we feed ourselves sometimes.”

Breaking Through Obstacles: Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re correct.

I had an unscheduled client and she was telling me what was going on and I was like, “Okay.” I started having to draw a graph and going, “This is it.”She’s like, “This is what my six-year-old is saying.” I’m like, “Yes, it is.”

When you have a self-realization that you have a problem or have an obstacle is the biggest thing there?

Yeah. Going, “My beliefs aren’t working for me. What do you have?” That’s like, “No, I’m ready to be done with this because I couldn’t do it on my own.”

What are some initial steps that you like to teach people? I know you do different things with different people, depending on where they’re at. What are some initial things that you like to give or have people do right off the bat to figure out where they’re at, at ground zero?

There are two separate pieces to it. The first piece is I have them rank themselves. Studies show that when you go to the doctor, notwithstanding any serious psychological issues that you have, you go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Please rate your general health. Is it good, fair, or really bad?”People inherently know. You know what’s going on with your body. If there’s something really serious, you might be in denial about it, but if you’ve gotten yourself to the doctor and you rate yourself, people know. If they’re like, “There’s something really wrong here,” they’re correct. We are the authority on ourselves. First I have them rank themselves in four different areas. There are four different areas of our lives which, if we are feeling balanced and healthy in those areas, then we’re rocking the world. They are your health, your relationships, your career and your creative expression. Those two go hand in hand, they can be two separate issues or they can be the same thing, and then your financial freedom. If any one of those areas is off-kilter, then it muddies up the whole game. In other words, if everything’s flying perfectly but you’re in turmoil in your relationships, your life sucks. You’re making more money than you ever have, you love your job and your relationships are great, but you can’t get out of bed in the morning, no deal.

I have them go on a scale of one to five just because it shakes up their brain. I’ll be like, “What would you say your health is on a scale of one to five?” and somebody will go, “Seven.” I’m like, “You’re knocking it out of the park.” They’re like, “Well, though,” and I’m like, “You weren’t listening to the question.” I have them rank themselves because that’s bringing them back down to the reality that they do need help. They go, “My life is really great,” and they’re like two, two, two and two. It’s fascinating to watch people go through that process. At the end of this very beginning initial conversation, they’re like, “Crap. What am I doing?” That’s number one. Then I take them through a process. This is when we’re getting to know each other. This is before I’ve even decided if they’re a good fit for what I do.

The next piece is actually inviting your inner six-year-old out to play, “If it could be any way you want it to be, what would it look like? Any way you want it to be.”There are no limitations. If you want to be a professional basketball player in this conversation, you get to be that professional basketball player. We work with the logistics later on. In other words, if I wake up in the morning and I’m like, “I sure hope I have a good day today. Yesterday was bad and I don’t really like my job. I’d like to have a good day but I don’t have any idea how to create a good day. I don’t even know what I want.” We’ve all dealt with those people. If you don’t know what’s going to make you happy, you’re not going to get happy. That is the key to it. What lights you up? What would you love to have happen? Then we start the process of, “Here’s where you are, you’re at a two. Here’s where you want to be, at a ten out of five. Let’s talk about how to get there because if you don’t know where you’re going, then you’re just going to wander around.”

We see that happen quite a bit. All people, all coaches see that happen, a lot of people wandering around unless they have some outlined or definite plan. A lot of people just drift. We’re all friends with Napoleon Hill, Outwitting the Devil. We just drift a lot. Any time that you can outline what you want, no matter how crazy it seems, it’s still better to have something versus nothing. You want them working towards today.

Let’s take that NBA basketball player thing. That really is important that somebody comes to that because if you’re like, “We close notes here. I don’t know about the NBA basketball player.” Here’s the really interesting thing. People don’t really want what they think they want. That person might come to me and go, “I always wanted to be an NBA basketball player.” There are two different things going on. They think they want that because they love playing basketball. It lights them up, it matters to them, and it’s really meaningful for them. That’s legitimate. They love that high energy, being in front of people. That person might start an intramural basketball team and do that as a hobby, and then they might really love teaching or speaking or some other thing. They think they want that, and they’re like, “I’m a 58-year-old man and I’m 5’5″. I can’t have what I want.” That’s your inner six-year-old going, “I can’t have what I want,” but you can.

How much do you see people struggling with patience? You talked about the six-year-olds. Six-year-olds have no patience. Somebody says, “My biggest struggle right now is remaining patient while seeing others making deals. Patience has always been my struggle. My six-year-old has the same issues.”

I actually taught this. It makes me sound super smart if I call it a rhizome system. It’s a root system. That’s all it is. Have you ever seen a huge bamboo forest? They’re clear up in the air. If you’ve ever seen bamboo shoot up, it’s amazing. From day to day it will grow exponentially. What you don’t know about that bamboo is that if you get a bamboo shoot and you plant it and you give it great energy and nurture it, that first year, it’s just going to grow a half inch. Our inner six-year-old is going to want to walk up to it and kick that damn shoot over and go, “Stupid shoot. I wasn’t made to grow bamboo, and everybody else is, “Look how tall Scott’s bamboo is.” The second year, it’s the same thing. Let’s say we didn’t kick it over. We’re like, “I’ll do it again.” We water it and we nurture it in its perfect environment. It’s the same thing. Third year, it’s the same thing. By this time, your six-year-old is pissed and like, “Pine trees are super way better than this.” It’s on the third year. That bamboo shoots up in that magical, magnificent, majestic way, and you’re like, “What just happened there?”

Breaking Through Obstacles: We think that no growth is happening, but what really is happening is the root system.

We think that no growth is happening, but what really is happening is the root system, that first year, that’s what we got. In order for that bamboo to be able to shoot up and withstand all of the winds and the weather that’s going to happen, it’s going to need a really strong root system in order to go. Remember that I was talking about putting all the right ingredients. If you’re nurturing it, if you’re working it, and you wake up every single day making the same commitment to success, and you’re like, “I’ve got a half an inch of growth. Are you kidding me? This is a year’s work and I’ve got a half inch growth?” all you have to do is pull your inner six-year-old into the world of the rhizome system and go, “No, look, it’s just growing down first.” Then you get that “overnight sensation.”

It’s all about putting down a good foundation. We’ve all got to pay our dues, making sure we’re building a big business. Otherwise, if we’re going to build a skyscraper on no foundations, it’s just going to fall over.

In order to deal with that impatience, and we all have it, what we do is we invite our inner child out to play and go, “Guess what we’re doing today? We’re growing our roots. It’s an upside down world. Look at it upside down and there’s growth going on.” We get them interested. I know it sounds funny, but we distract them from the external evidence and get them super interested. Do you remember planting seeds in kindergarten? You’d come in on Monday going, “It was a sunny weekend and teacher said she would she would water it,” and then you have the sprout. We just have to distract the inner six-year-old.

You’ve got to play with your inner six-year-old and enjoy the sprouts, not the trees, at this point. It takes a while to get some stuff done. We’re talking literally fourteen years to get to where I’m going.

Do you remember that phase for you, Scott?

Yeah, super frustrated. I kept pounding, but also there was something in me that said, “I know this is for the long term. I know I’m going through this, I’ve just got to make it through this period.” I don’t know how long it lasts, but I was doing anything to scratch and claw and to stay around during my lowest time. I knew like, “I will not always be here. I will get through it.” I have a big belief in self-faith. The good Lord doesn’t give us anything that we can’t handle. I’m a cliché, the whole point where steel has got to be pounded on by heat and beaten to death to become a sword. We all have to go through trials and tribulations, heat being pounded on to get where we ultimately want to be. Otherwise, if we don’t, we crack too easily. We fracture too easily if we don’t go through those things.

Another way to distract your inner six-year-old is take what you’re really good at, what you’re already good at. It can be anything. Remind your inner six-year-old what it took to be good, whether it was getting a four-year college degree. You don’t go to college the first day or even the first month and go, “There’s the degree.” You have to keep pushing your way at it. Whatever you’re good at, when you apply the things that came easily to you in that area or that you were willing to come back to and go, “I’m going to run sprints again or I’m going to lift weights again,” even though from day to day you don’t see a difference, over the years of you practicing that sport, you mastered it. What you did, what you just told me, is you applied the same principles that you applied to a successful sporting experience. You apply those to closing a note.

I know I’m going to get beat down. I know I’ve got to start somewhere. I’ve got to do what I can to get in the game. I’ve got to get my toe in. I’ve got to do whatever I need to do. I knew I was going to get better every day. I always looked at, “What did I do today that was better?” When I walk to the office here, I’m like, “Where are we at? Did we do something productive? Are we working towards something in the long term?”I’ve got maps up here and I have different goals. I don’t have a lot of goals every year because I don’t want to be watered down. I usually have one or two focuses for the most part, and then everything else fills in behind it.

Breaking Through Obstacles: We apply the same rules of success to every single thing that we’re doing, from relationships to sports to business.

That makes all the difference. It’s that dedication of showing up every single day. You have losses. You were in football and your team probably got beaten pretty harshly sometimes. You didn’t walk off the field going, “I guess I’m not a football player.” You were like, “No. Next time I’m going to do it better.” You evaluated, “What could I have done better? What did I do that was really good?” Then move forward. It’s the same rules. We apply the same rules of success to every single thing that we’re doing, from relationships to sports to business.

We have a comment. It says, “I imagine some people have to really dig in and peel through their day to day routines to let that notion of playful actions get traction and really explore what they would love to do or make happen.” Sometimes it starts with little actions and rewrite their beliefs enough to do that, is that correct?

Believe it or not, some people, they’re like scripted from being six years old. It’s about suffering. They are like, “Every day is about suffering.” You meet those people at the grocery store. “How is your day going?” you say to them. I can imagine you’d do that. You’re like, “How are you?” They’re like, “So far so good,” or, “Surviving. I’m still alive.” I’m pretty much always the life coach, but if I’m going to crank it all, I’m like, “It sucks to be you,” which I don’t do very often. Usually what I do is I invite their inner six-year-old out to play. If it’s really bad, if they’re super cranky, I’ll be like, “If you could be doing anything at all right now, what would you be doing?” There was one guy. His whole face changed and he was all tattered up wearing black. He had a look going on and I was like, “If you could be doing anything at all today, what would you be doing?” He goes, “I’d be at my 77th Bruce Springsteen concert.” I’m like, “Have you been to Bruce Springsteen 76 times?” He’s like, “Yeah.” Then he started telling me all of these different places he’s been. What he thought being an adult was, he was like, “I’m at work and I’m being a grown up and I’m doing my thing,” that’s how he was showing up suffering. I invited his six-year-old out and you can see people’s child come out. Their faces glow and they get super excited and they’ll tell you stuff. What I do with my clients is I’m inviting them out all the time. I’m asking them questions about ideas that they have about their routines. “I can’t do that because it means this,” and I’ll go, “That’s super interesting.” I’ll say it back to them and they’re like, “That’s crazy thinking, isn’t it?” I’ll be like, “Who’s to judge your crazy? I’m not going to judge your crazy. I have my own crazy, but yeah, it is crazy.”

You’re saying it’s okay to be a little crazy.

No, I’m saying it’s so much more fun. Number one deathbed regret is that people did what they thought they were supposed to do versus what they wanted. Let your crazy out. We all want to meet your crazy. We want to hang out with your crazy.

It’s National Get Up Day. If you’re falling down, then get up. Let’s say you’ve hit a low spot, you had something fail, or you got slapped in the face. In our case, a deal didn’t close or something bad happened to the deal. What are some steps that people can do to pull their asses up or the simple things that they can do to get their energy refocused? What are some recommendations or tips that you give people?

Breaking Through Obstacles: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

I just read a really interesting book. In all honesty, I listened to it on an audio book. We live out in the middle of nowhere with the goats, and so I listen to audio books while I drive. I just ordered a hard copy of the book because it’s so good. It’s by Dale Carnegie, so it’s totally antiquated. It’s called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. I expected it to be okay but it was exceptional. One of the things that he addresses in the book is in regard to worry. That’s really what happens. We get disappointed. We get worried. We’re like, “This disappointment happened. What if all of the things that happen now are disappointing?” Again, your six-year-old comes out. We all worry about things. We all get scared about things, but then we don’t know what to do with it. If you have a note deal that falls through, I can’t go, “Your deal didn’t fall through, Scott. That’s not a problem.” You’d just look at me and be like, “You’re stupid. Yes, it did.” I actually did this with a group call. It was really funny because I was like, “Everybody, write down something you’re worried about,” and they’re like, “You don’t tell us to do that. You don’t tell us to worry about what we’re worried about.” I’m like, “I’m not telling you to worry about what you’re worried about. I’m telling you to write it down.”

In the case of a deal falling through, you’ve been working on a deal, your team’s been on the deal, and it falls through. You would write down what’s the worst thing that can happen. If you’re going super crazy, you could go, “I’m not good at closing notes. This is not a good business for me and I lose my business.” I don’t think you think like that, but let’s just say for the sake of this discussion, you did. Coming to terms with what you’re worried about is super powerful because we’re always pushing it away. I don’t want to think about that thing that scares me. “I’ve got this cough that I’ve had for years. What if it’s cancer?” We don’t go to the doctor because it scares us, so we’re pushing it away. Every single day, we suffer just a little bit every time we cough. If we write it down, “I’ve got this cough and I’m super scared about it. What’s the worst thing that could happen?” The worst thing is that it could be cancer. That’s pretty serious. That’s something to be worried about. Once you get it on paper, all of a sudden the thing that’s in the closet that we can’t see is way scarier than anything. When we write it down, we go, “This is the first step. I’m worried that I might have cancer. The next step is I make peace with that.” I know that sounds weird based on what I teach people to do, but it’s just a process that we’re exorcising some demons basically. “The worst thing it could be is that I could have cancer and I’m going to die.”We all have a terminal disease called living where no on rides for free. I’m making peace with that. “That would be super disappointing, but could I handle that? Yeah. Could I survive it? No, but I can handle it.” This is the third piece. Notice we’re just taking things out to look at them and deal with them.

The third piece is, “What can I do to improve my circumstances?”The answer is pick up the damn phone and make the damn phone call to the damn doctor because worst case, you’ve already come to terms to a certain degree with the worst case scenario. Now you’re on the path of not being a victim anymore. You’re going to improve your situation. Bad stuff happens. It doesn’t matter how good a life coach you have, bad stuff is going to happen. Being able to manage those things and come at them from a place of power, it’s so much more powerful to go, “I could have cancer. That would suck,” and pick up the phone call, that’s way more powerful than suffering for years with a cough that the doctor goes, “By the way you have a touch of asthma. Here’s an inhaler. Use it as needed,” and then you don’t suffer any more. A week later, you’re fine.

That’s the way to manage it. We’re going to have disappointments but when we put ourselves in a position of power versus victimization, you think about it, people are always like, “To be a kid again.” People are like, “It was so awesome.” No, it was scary as hell and very disorienting. You’re walking around, you’d be out playing with your friends and you’d be like, “Life is awesome. I’ve got to be Starsky.” You go in the house and grandma died or something, and you’re like, “Wait a second. I was happy. Did I make grandma die by being Starsky?” “I don’t know. You don’t have context for it. This is taking ourselves out of that victimization where we were. We are victimized as kids because it’s just scary and hard, and putting us in a position of, “How can I make it better?” That alone, even going to the doctor and then going, “You do have an issue here, let’s get you on some medications,” that feels better than constantly wondering what’s happening.

Breaking Through Obstacles: We all have a terminal disease called living where no on rides for free.

I guess the power comes from illuminating your fears and realizing that it really doesn’t exist, but you have the power to act. Picking up the phone and calling the doctor to schedule a doctor’s appointment for your cough, for your knee, or whatever else might be ailing. Is that correct?

That’s exactly right. It’s just turning on the light. That six-year-old got scared about grandma dying because they had no context for it. What we do is people get scared and they go back to that six-year-old. They go back and it just feels super scary again. They get stuck there and understandably so. It’s not like they’re bad or dumb or anything. We all do it. What it does is it goes, “Wait a second, I have more context. I have more ability. I have control over not everything, no one does,” because it’s part of the human experience. For all of the years that you have in closing notes, you don’t know what’s going to happen every single day, but you have context. The day that I thought the worst thing could happen and that it happened, I handled it. You get back into that. That’s actually inviting the adult out when you go, “This is what I’m afraid of. This is the worst case scenario. I make peace with that. How can I make it better?” is actually activating the inner adult.

We do fear the worst things, and then when it does happen, we realize that we’ve overcome it or it wasn’t nearly as scary.

In most times, 90% of the time, it doesn’t happen.

When something’s going wrong, jumping from where you’re at to the worst possible thing, it never makes it any better. It will only make the situation worse. It takes good energy away from what’s going on.

It sucks the joy out of your life.

We talked about the underlying code, the matrix to our lives that helps us in programming. A lot of that dives into our self-talker, our inner dialogue with our self and our inner vocabulary. A lot of us would go get locked up in jail for domestic violence if we had to be judged by what we say to ourselves.

It would happen every day. I had a client who said, “I’m going into dangerous neighborhoods of my mind,” where he’s getting beaten up every day and you keep going back there. I’m giving everybody the tool now and I’m also giving a disclaimer that it’s a practice. Just because I tell you this, you’ll practice it and then you’ll forget it. It takes a lot of work to get better and better at this. What we do is we spiral into those dangerous neighborhoods in our minds and we think horrible things about ourselves.”Nobody’s going to listen to me because,” and you can fill in the blank with almost everything. Nobody’s going to listen to me because I didn’t work out today. Nobody’s going to listen to me because we have all of these things and that self-talk. When we’re paying attention, what we get to do is we get to hear how we’re talking to ourselves. This is really key. If you don’t like the way you talk to yourself, how many times have you said, “I’m not going to talk to myself that way anymore.” We don’t have a choice about thinking. We’re always thinking. That’s a thing. However, if we say, “I’m not going to talk like that anymore,” we’re still going to be thinking.

We have to first pay attention, “I noticed that I don’t say things to me that a helpful coach would,” because really you’re your own life coach. “I’m not saying the things to me that help me perform at my peak.” Then we notice that we’re doing it, “I’m doing that thing again.” We stop, we go to a neutral zone, and then we go, “How would I like to replace that?” If I were your coach and I was like, “Your deal did not fall through,” you’d be like, “You’re fired.” That was just a stupid thing to say. We also don’t want that personal development thing where we go, “I’m whole, perfect, strong, powerful, great,” and our subconscious is like, “Liar. You’re full of crap.” We get neutral. Scott, you said it so well. For all those fourteen years of you going, “Okay,” and you would walk off the metaphorical note field, you would have maybe gotten beaten that day but what you say to yourself is, “What did I do well today?” That’s the first thing. I don’t think you’re this guy, but if your subconscious is like, “You’re an idiot, Scott. Loser day. You blew it.” Then you get to go, “Wait a second, what did I do well today?” In the past, I would have responded like this, “I did this really well today. What can I do better tomorrow?” You’ll notice it’s not a, “What a loser day. You really blew it in this way.” You go, “What can I do better tomorrow?” That’s forward thinking versus this day that I don’t have any control over now because it’s over. We replace it. In our conscious moments, we choose what we’re going to think instead. We’ll find ourselves going, “I’m such a loser,” and then we go, “I just noticed I’m doing that.” Now I’m going to go, ” I actually do this thing really well. I’m going to do some more of that.”

I will definitely work on it. It’s very cute because I have a personal trainer that comes to the office here every day from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM. He guides me on things. We’re doing things now, some crazy stuff that I wouldn’t have been able to do two and a half years ago. I would do it and my back would be curled up on the ground limping in a spasm.

I’m learning how to kickbox and somebody is like, “You know how to kickbox?” I’m like, “No, I don’t know how to kick box. I go to kickboxing but I’m like kicking stuff and almost falling over.” I’m looking forward to mastering some things like you are mastering them now.

I understand the self-talk. One of the most important things that people can do, especially when you are new at something is to get rid or remove yourself from bad influences around you. Try to separate yourself from friends or family or loved ones. Let’s talk a little about that. We get that all the time with people here like, “My spouse is not supportive. My mom says get a real job. I’ve burned bridges because I’ve tried to do everything else and had not had success. My wife or my family thinks it’s just another one of those things.

I’ve heard Aaron talk about this with you even. I have heard of him over and over again. I was really surprised the first time I heard him say it. He was being interviewed on a podcast and a radio show. Because he helps small businesses, they said, “What’s the number one piece of advice you would give to entrepreneurs out there?” The first time he said it, I was like, “What did you just say?” What he said was, “Don’t listen to the people that love you.” I was like, “You can’t say that.” He’s like, “No. You can’t listen because there are two things going on.” People want to keep you safe. If your wife is like, “What are you doing again? This is craziness.”She’s like, “What are you doing?” She’s feeling scared. People are going to want you to stay small. If your mom says, “Go get a real job,” she’s got this construct because your mom’s a six-year-old, too. I’m sorry to tell you, it’s super disappointing, but she is like, “That’s not how it works. Our people have to work hard.” If you figure out how to close notes then you can slowly move to the point where A, it doesn’t feel like work, and B, you can work less often.

For Aaron, it’s not life coaching but just generally don’t listen to the people that love you. He has a really great relationship with his dad. His dad’s a really good guy, but he was always like, “Son, what are you doing?” It was out of love. We have different categories of people. When you’ve got friends who are like, “Scott, don’t work out. Come drink beer with us all night,” those are the friends you’re like, “You’re not my people.” You begin in a healthy way. This is a very powerful thing, too. You’re not a good fit for them either. It’s not a matter of, “These people aren’t worthy of me,” because that’s judgmental and not healthy, but going, “This isn’t healthy.” They’re going to be uncomfortable around you when you’re like, “Things can be amazing. Let’s move and let’s shake,” and they’re like, “We just wanted to complain about our bosses.” You’re making them uncomfortable and that’s why they’re trying to change you. That’s when you shift out. The ones where you can’t go, “Get rid of my mom. Going to get a new mom,” you can also change the nature. You can’t necessarily change the relationship because your mom is your mom, but you can change the nature of your relationship by how you interact with her.

The thing about your friends who are drinking beer, they’re trying to hold you back in that protective six-year-old playpen that they got used to you being in. You don’t want them enabling the inner bad talk or the inner failures when you’re trying to get beyond that.

This isn’t for everybody. There are some people that are going to listen to that going, “Maybe I want more than my friends do but I’m not willing to get that uncomfortable.” That’s okay. Everybody gets to choose how to do this, but know that you’re making a decision, know that you’ve decided you’re not willing to get yourself out of the norm. You’re not willing to rise above what you’ve always known. Understand that you’re still the driver at the wheel. You’re still driving the car. You don’t get it both ways. I have a 96-year-old granny and I have to take her to the doctor. She was 94 driving and oddly got into a pretty serious car accident. Car malfunction, I’m sure that’s what happened. When she said she needed to get a car, what I said to her in a very subtle way was, “Hell, no.” She had a compound fracture. Both her tibia and her fibula were gnarly. We’re almost a year and a half out now, and it turns out that her foot hurts her a lot. She keeps going, “I don’t know why my foot hurts.” She broke it really badly.

I take her to the doctor just because you don’t want to risk things with a 96-year-old. I’m like, “It’s just going to hurt.” We go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Your foot’s hurting and we took some X-rays,” because they don’t want to make any mistakes either. “It turns out it’s going to hurt because you’ve got a rod and some bolts instead of bones working anymore.” They’re like, “Are you wearing your boot?”She’s like, “No, the boot really bothers me.” The doctor goes, “You’re 96. We know you’ve made some great decisions to get you here, and this is how I feel about it. You can do what you want. If you don’t like to wear that boot, don’t wear your boot, but your foot’s going to hurt.” That was it and it was really funny because the doctor didn’t tell her to do it and she’s been wearing her boot every single day. Interestingly, her foot doesn’t her as much. We don’t know what the connection is. When we’re looking at our lives and we’re like, “I’m still going to go out to beers with my buddies. They don’t like it when I talk personal development, so we just talk about their bosses.” Just don’t expect your foot not to hurt, is all I’m saying.

Michelle, one of the great things that you have done over the last couple of years definitely, you actually do some amazing retreats, too. You got another one in the works as well?

Yeah. We’re planning this fall’s retreat. We had a yoga instructor come last time and she was hilarious. The people that wanted to do yoga did yoga. She was like, “Totally.” She was all in. We did breaking therapy, too, where we broke dishes and stuff. Everybody got to write something that they wanted to break away and break through. She writes it and you can see her writing it, and she walks up and it’s her turn to break stuff, and she looks there, she’s got her hand up like this and she goes, “Namaste, bitches,” and she throws her dish. We are planning an event. It will be on the West Coast. Hopefully, we’ll get September. We have some amazing weather in September here in the Pacific Northwest at the coast. You come and we teach. This one that we had this last time, I had Aaron come teach and people ate that up with a spoon. I’m teaching the whole weekend. I’ll have a private chef come in and remarkable food and gorgeous surroundings. If anybody’s interested in something like that, they can find me at Michelle@MichelleYoungCoaching.com.

Yes. I’ve not worked a day in my life since about 2007. I stopped working and I started playing, so I’m Michelle At Play.

Breaking Through Obstacles: Go by yourself, unplug and just do something that pleases you.

What’s the big thing that recharges you, Michelle?

I have two things. Like I said, I had a client text me going, “Can we talk?” It was so great that that’s what we did before this call because I love teaching. I love coaching. I can do it all day long and just have all the energy in the world, and then I love painting.

You love to paint and you’ve actually put out a calendar of some of the paintings that you’ve done maybe in different places when you guys were down in Mexico or Paris. Is that a big recommendation for people that are struggling, they’re having a rough time, just to break away to go do something that recharges their batteries for a little bit?

I learned it from Julia Cameron. She wrote a book called The Artist’s Way and she calls them artist dates. First of all, cleaning your closet is not an artist date, grocery shopping is not an artist date. Going by yourself, unplugging and just doing something that pleases you, whatever that is, go to a movie by yourself. People don’t know themselves and when they say, “My spouse doesn’t make me happy,” it’s because they don’t even know what makes them happy and they’re not caring for themselves. I encourage Aaron, I’ll be like, “You need to go do something,” and usually he’s buying coats or he’ll go horseback-riding or he’ll do something like that. What we do is we come back to our own lives rejuvenated. We come back going, “I can do this.” That is why I paint. While I’m doing it, it’s super Zen and I can focus on color theory, and then I come back and, believe it or not, I can apply what I did in my painting to my marriage, my family, my coaching. It feels like a waste of time, and what it is, it’s giving you recharge time.

I totally agree with that. It’s good. It keeps you on your toes. It keeps you rocking and rolling. It keeps that six-year-old inside of you ready to play with other people’s six-year-olds. Michelle, I want to say thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to jump on with us and have a little bit of fun. You shared some great insights. I want to thank everybody. Once again, you can find Michelle at MichelleYoungCoaching.com. Take care. Have a great get up day.

Scott, thank you so much. It’s a great way to start my day.

Thank you so much. We’ll see you later, Michelle.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

That’s going to wrap it up for this episode of The Note Closers Show. Listen to what Michelle said. If you’re struggling, step away, go play with your six-year-old self but also give yourself time to build that root in your business, whatever that is. Whatever you’re struggling with, give it time to build the root system so you can grow much taller in the long term. Go out and make something happen. We will see you all at the top.

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About Michelle Young

We are creations of the Creative. We are the Universe manifest and our unique makeup of genetics, epigenetics, life experiences and personality are a divine moment in time. It’s our mandate to take the desires of our souls and express them fully.

I preach radical self-care. I preach pushing the boundaries of our comfort zones to enter into the world of our desires and dreams.

My group classes are carefully curated to create places of safe learning as well as a mastermind experience. Weekly conversations and Life Design assignments support change and growth. Like-minded souls and a desire for personal growth and success create an atmosphere to raise your energy and drive and keep it up throughout the week and beyond.

One on one clients enroll to practice these same principles in private sessions with me. Conversations where specific, life goals and events are seen and practiced through the proven life principles of the great thinkers and successes of the world.